What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) – April 2015

Posted on August 3, 2015 by John F Croston III

Guess I forgot to post April, May, and June’s a few weeks ago. So here at least is what I was up to at 8:15 PM in April. Will post the May, June, and July over the next two weeks.

Background about Posts

Started keeping track of what I was doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) every day for the last few months after reading Kitt Hodson’s Pastry Box article from Jan 1, 2015. Which was about how a year earlier she read Erica Douglass’s article about writing down what she did at 11:11 AM and 20:14 (8:14 PM) everyday.

I thought this was a great idea to see if I could find any patterns in my nights. So far I tend to watch TV Monday, Thursday, and Sunday nights when I’m home. Also on the weekends I tend to be leaving or coming back from dinner, sometimes even eating dinner.

Here is my post of what I’ve been doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) in January, February, and March.

April

Apr 1 – ENTERED 2015/04/02 – Standing at the top of the second-floor stairs of Clyde’s in Chinatown attending the Innovation in Accessibility meet-up. Talking with William, Jason, and others discussing with a deaf guy about building single page applications using JavaScript frameworks and how they are mostly not accessible. Interestingly he hadn’t thought much about their accessibility for others after a long discussion about captioning.

Apr 2 – In REI purchasing new hiking shoes and three Isis of Smartwool socks. Used my dividend, plus I got 20% off the $90 shoes and 10% off the socks because I got three pair. A day spent looking at the code to improve developer accessibility and what needs changing for the “Standards for Application” demo websites.

Apr 3 – Re-reading Elle Luna’s (@elleluna) blog post on Medium, called “The Crossroads of Should and Must”. Thought it made sense to re-read this post after reading the introduction to her new book by the same name before going any further with the book. Was listening to B.B. King’s “Live in Cook County Jail” while reading.  Once done heading over to District Taco to grab a few breakfast tacos (egg, cheese, and chorizo in a flour tortilla). Might even add a bit of the leftover hot green papaya salad to add a bit of flavor and punch.

Apr 4 – Watching Duke Blue Devils beat Michigan St. Spartans by 15 points with less than three minutes to go in the game. Woke up at 6:30 AM after the upstairs neighbors alarm went off. Then went to Giant to turn in $90+ of change. Next went to Heller’s Bakery for donuts, but they were closed after being open since 1928. Sad day. Would have gone to Citibank to cash birthday check, but the branch in Foggy Bottom branch didn’t open until 10 AM. Got to Plaza Arts to pick up canvases to start my 100 days project to paint wine and food related paintings each day. Stopped at Union Market for lunch and found out Toki pop-up was closed because Maketto is opening next Friday. At A. Litteri’s stocked up on cured Italian meats while one if the guys made me a free cured nears sandwich after ordering a meatball sub.

Apr 5 – Walking past the corner of Commonwealth Ave. and Camron St. Was out on a 5,600+ step walk over the course of an hour wandering into Old Town Alexandria to watch the tourist on Easter. The day was spent sleeping in and then heading to DuPont Circle Farmers Market shopping for food. Had a great vegetarian shiitake mushroom, brown rice, and other herbs, etc. sandwich. Next we drove around DC to see what was going on. Then headed to Eden Center to check out the new Gold Fortune grocery store. Next walked to the opposite end of the shopping center for Pho and back to get more food. Picked up roast pork finely chopped along with pickled veggies to make my version of Banh Mi and a few other items. Total steps walked was 13K+ or over 6 miles.

Apr 6 – Opening up old paint tubes so I can start my 100-day project with paintings of wine bottles and food. First wine painting turned out okay after not painting for like six or eight years. The day was spent updating developer accessibility issues and CSS, plus testing VETS for accessibility issues.

Apr 7 – ENTERED 2015/04/08 – Started cleaning up the apartment by gathering all the trash in the wastebaskets. Then moved on to dinner and painting wine bottle paintings, while watching TV.

Apr 8 – Reading Elle Luna’s post on her “My Morning Routine”, while watching “The Best Bars in America” in the background. Had Trusted Tester/accessibility meeting for two hours in the morning and then read the document for tomorrow’s meeting. The afternoon was adding spent working on CSS fixes to the developer to improve keyboard accessibility and fix skip navigation anchor issue. Then did JAWS testing of VETS. Still need dinner and finish my third 100-day project painting.

Apr 9 – Cleaning off my paint brush after adding a dark orange background for tonight’s wine bottle painting. Need to start painting the backgrounds a day or more in advance so they can dry and make the bottle painting easier. Day of meetings and testing. Helping figure out Section 508 policy at work and what goes on with bringing Trusted Tester into work.

Apr 10 – At District Taco with Chris, Tony, and the kids. They enjoyed the tacos greatly. I had two fish tacos and two basic breakfast tacos with chorizo. Then took them out to Mt. Vernon to show them where George Washington lived. Ended evening at the Dairy Godmother for custard. The daily flavor was cherry blossom. Finished up last updates to Developer website to correct accessibility issues for TABLEs, skip navigation, and keyboard users, along with more VETS testing.

Apr 11 – Sitting the car reading Twitter while friends and their kids go see Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, and Korean Memorial. We spent the day wandering around National Zoo and then had dinner at 2 Amy’s. Best pizza in the area. We’re grabbing frozen custard again tonight at The Dairy Godmother once done.

Apr 12 – Working on my 2014 taxes. Spent good part of the day trying to install and update Turbo Tax 2014. Started around 12:30 PM and it was taking forever so left to meet Megan at Buzz Bakery to go over and help her with her accessibility slides. While I was gone in the of middle loading Turbo Tax, Windows XP decided to reboot for security updates so had to start over. Once rebooted Windows needed to download more updates and wouldn’t let the machine do anything else for like an hour. Finally, git everything loaded and slow time getting mist recent updates to Turbo Tax. Now download Virgina state tax information. Hoping to get done tonight so I can review thing tomorrow night.

Apr 13 – Watching “2 Broke Girls”, then grabbing takeout from South China before more TV and reviewing my taxes. Turbo Tax currently has me owing $0 to the state if Virginia. Never in 35+ years of doing taxes have never noticed or been owed money. Might also be the night to order my new Retina MacBook Pro.

Apr 14 – Driving to Five Guys to pick-up a cheeseburger with lettuce, grilled onions, and grilled mushrooms, along with ketchup and mustard. Worked on testing a native application iPhone with VoiceOver, which is a first for me. Spent time reading Section 508 testing document too.

Apr 15 – Sitting outside Clarendon Apple Store to see if they can fix my iPhone 4S. Late yesterday evening the top power button stopped working unless you press it hard. The other issue has been once my battery gets between 60% – 70% the phone will drop to 20% battery or shut off without warning. Most likely time to get a new phone.

Apr 16 – Finishing up Chicken Tikka Masala, garlic naan, and a samosa while watching “The Big Bang Theory”. Had a busy day starting with three-hour meeting about new accessibility policy and implementation at work. Then dealing with Compliance Sheriff not running because of lack of space, new intranet accessibility, what to do about some documents accessibility, and a few other things.

Apr 17 – REENTERED – 04/20/2015 – Driving between Cheesetique and Good Fortune Market to get roast pork from the food court. Got there around 8:25 PM and found out they closed the food court at 8:00 PM. You would think a food court in a grocery store would be open later on a Friday night.

Apr 18 – REENTERED – 04/20/2015 – Watching TV while my new iPhone 4S is updating my applications and music. Spent most of day restoring my iPhone 4S after getting a replacement one from the Clarendon Apple store. Pro Tip: remove music and other media files (TV shows, movies, videos, etc.) before your last backup, so you don’t have to wait nine hours for 12.5 GB to load. That is if you have a backup somewhere.

Apr 19 – ENTERED – 05/05/2015 – Lost this entry because over the weekend of April 19 my work computer rebooted. When I opened the SimpleNote web page, it refreshed to what was in there from Friday morning, which only had Thursday night’s entry. This meant I had to recreate Friday, Saturday, and Sunday’s entries that I never remembered what happened Sunday night beside most likely watching TV.

Apr 20 – Reading a Web Development Group article about Google changing their search algorithm to rank responsive websites higher when on searching on your mobile device or tablet, also watching 2 Broke Girls. Had a busy day getting a bunch of things done. From enterprise scanning software, figuring out PDF accessibility issues, and making recommendations on improving new website performance.

Apr 21 – Starting to look into best and easiest way to convert my main jfciii.com website pages into responsive pages, since Google changed their search algorithm to give a higher ranking to responsive pages. Updated page TITLEs for APIv2 application so assistive technology users will understand what the page is about from the TITLE. Next, tested iPhone application with VoiceOver at work and tomorrow get to see how it works when I change the language of Spanish on the phone. Supposedly it’s going to switch to being in Spanish.

Apr 22 – Laying on sofa killing time reading Twitter to see what I missed while working today. Then I’m heading out to grab takeout Chinese to eat while watching “Best Bars in America” and “Brew Dogs” on Esquire Network.  Worked with a co-worker to check the accessibility of iPhone application with VoiceOver for the Spanish version. This application changes to Spanish when iPhone has the language set to Spanish. Taught him VoiceOver while he listened to Spanish to make sure it was correct.

Apr 23 – Sitting in the front row at iStrategyLabs listening to @moonstompmaggie and @elifitch talk about the project they did for Facebook’s F8 conference. In a short time, they built a 3D interactive experience using Three JS, with not much knowledge of either. Put accessibility issues into GitHub for URL shortener, along with finished testing iPhone application using VoiceOver in Spanish.

Apr 24 – Driving with Devorah to meet one of Jen Strickland’s friend near the White House at 18F to show him around, since he’s new to town. Drive around 14th St. and end up at Izakaya Seki for sushi, beef tongue, monkfish liver, and more. Ended night at Dangerously Delicious Pie. Mostly worked on read new Trusted Tester and Section 508 Policy document.

Apr 25 – Relaxing on the couch watching “The Big Bang Theory” reruns after driving up to Philly and back to meet Alex Hillman at Reading Terminal Market to grab a roast pork sandwich from Tommy Di Nic’s and two Train Wreck’s from Becky’ Cajun Cafe. After getting them, we headed back to Indy Hall to eat and have some old Zin, along with cured meats. Before heading home, I stopped at Di Bruno’s in south Philly for cured meat and cheese for cured meat and cheese. The last stop was Isgro’s to get two cannoli’s.

Apr 26 – Was in kitchen toasting Wegmans Tuscan garlic bread for sandwich with roasted pork and pickled veggies while watching Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” on CNN, which is a clip show from last years shows. CNN is getting ready for the premier of this season tonight at 9 PM. Ran over to DuPont Circles farmers market (saw chef Jose Andres) and then to the Georgetown Flea Market. On my way to Good Fortune Supermarket, I stopped at Pho 75 for a small bowl of round-eye and fatty brisket with extra noodles. Once done there went to Clarendon Apple Store to get a replacement the iPhone 4S for the iPhone 4S that I got eight days ago. The problem was with the wifi antennae. Now spending the night restoring the phone.

Apr 27 – Catching up with Twitter while half-watching what’s going on on the TV about police and protestors in Baltimore. Did additional reading on how to use VoiceIver on an iPhone to make accessibility testing easier?

Apr 28 – Sitting in my buddy Tony’s basement with him, Barry, Lori, Jim, and myself drinking two Matt Cline “Three” Zinfandel wine, Merlot, and a Sauterne. Worked on a quick demo of how to display a mobile version of datasets and for the desktop.

Apr 29 – ENTERED – 04/30/2015 – standing  at the corner of M St. and 1st St. NE in front the Harris Teeter talking about DC’s bike share with Kevin Cole after the Accessibility Innovation meet-up at Tynan Tea shop, listened to two talks. The first was about a company that is helping people with disabilities. While demoing one product and looking at their other one realized why not add a suction cup to hold the pill-holding tool to a surface so a one-handed person can open bottles. The room started laughing, and the two guys thought it was brilliant.  Told them I’d like one of the first prototypes and they said sure. Guess I should have patented it when I got home.

Apr 30 – Updating my phone’s calendar to pick-up my car Friday night at Landmark Honda after work, while watching “The Big Bang Theory”. Spent time today reviewing a few PDFs.

Conclusion

In the future, I plan to post this information once a month at the beginning of the following month once I’m caught up.

Hopefully, this has been helpful to you and gets you to keep track of what you do a particular time of the day, along with a short daily diary.

If you want to meet up to do something exciting at 8:15 PM some evening, please leave a comment. Or a suggestion of something that is not part of my ordinary life you think I should do.

Posted in 2015, 8:15 PM, April, What I've Been Doing | 8 Comments

What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) – March 2015

Posted on June 1, 2015 by John F Croston III

Started keeping track of what I was doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) every day for the last few months after reading Kitt Hodson’s Pastry Box article from Jan 1, 2015. Which was about how a year earlier she read Erica Douglass’s article about writing down what she did at 11:11 AM and 20:14 (8:14 PM) everyday.

I thought this was a great idea to see if I could find any patterns in my nights. So far I tend to watch TV Monday, Thursday, and Sunday nights when I’m home. Also on the weekends I tend to be leaving or coming back from dinner, sometimes even eating dinner.

Here is my post of what I’ve been doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) in January and February.

March

Mar 1 – Sitting at the counter with William at the Black Bear Cafe having the chicken fried steak after a great day in Napa with Cindy, Matt, Apollo, Doug, Nguyet, and William. Matt took as his guest to a wine tasting at Hall Winery. I started the day having tacos in another grocery store. Then it was on to Ad Hoc for brunch. Saw Thomas Keller was sitting at the bar. Grabbed pastries at Bouchon Bakery.

Mar 2 – ENTERED 2015/03/03 – Driving from outside LA towards San Diego with William for CSUN a day early. Traveled from Carmel-by-the-Sea south and stopped to take photos along the way if the Pacific Coast Highway. We saw vistas, lighthouses, a zebra in the middle of a herd of cows, elephant seals and had fish and Chios, along with haggis balls at Mac’s in Santa Barbara, CA.

Mar 3 – ENTERED 2015/03/08 – Hanging out with Denis, Lisa, and others from Deque waiting to grab dinner. Need to think a bit more about this.

Mar 4 – ENTERED 2015/03/08 – Attending the Deque party and waiting to for the karaoke to start. Saw more people sign during karaoke than ever before. Ian Pouncy even played air guitar. Some of the best performances were by the guy from NVDA, and Matt May filling in for Marcy Sutton doing “Push It” by Salt n Pepper. Along with group version “Live Shack” by the B52’s and many more.

Mar 5 – Sitting in the 30th Anniversary opening event for CSUN. Watching Geri Jewell and another comedian, along with Mark Goffeney playing the guitar with his feet. Then off to meet people for Ramen.

Mar 6 – Sitting in the Loin’s Share with Lisa, Gareth, and William on the last day of CSUN after wine up in the room.

Mar 7 – Sitting with William, Elle, Glenda, Karl, Billy, Sina, and his girlfriend at the reception dinner for Sassy and Pratik after a long week of CSUN. A great way to unwind and spend more time with friends.

Mar 8 – ENTERED 2015/03/09 – Was flying over the middle of America somewhere. 90% sure I was asleep because a bunch of us stayed up all night talking after the end of CSUN and Sassy and Pratik’s wedding. Went to sleep once on the flight from SAN to SFO sometime after 9:15 AM.

Mar 9 – Watching “2 Broke Girls” and need to relax after a great CSUN. A nice slow first day back checking e-mail, looking at Compliance Sheriff, and a few other meetings.

Mar 10 – Watching “Counting Cars”. Need another night of TV to recover from a great week in CA at Bay Area Accessibility Camp at LinkedIn and then CSUN in San Diego. Hoping the cough that started this afternoon doesn’t turn into something more.

Mar 11 – Leaving Caphe Banh Mi after a nice chat with a couple from Canada on their way back to Naples, FL, for the rest of the winter. I ended up getting a large house Pho with extra noodles. Spent the afternoon teaching Compliance Sheriff training.

Mar 12 – Watching “Big Bang Theory”. Spending another relaxing night resting after a busy CSUN. Doing it to help prevent what seems to be a cold from getting worse. Did accessibility review of budget PDF and then attended APIv2 UX meeting.

Mar 13 – Watching “Treehouse Masters” after an interesting week after CSUN. The cough seems to be getting worse at times. Had two breakfast tacos with chorizo and two fish tacos from District Taco. Ran into John Yuda and his dad in line.

Mar 14 – Driving Sam home from Pho at Hai Duong in Eden Center. Day of sleeping late and napping with a stop at St. Elmo’s to visit with everyone.

Mar 15 – Watching Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” Kurdistan episode. Need to do a bit of  laundry, so I have clothes for work. Spent the day sleeping, then breakfast at Hack’s Place in Old Town Alexandria, before heading to Wegmans, and then a three plus hour nap.

Mar 16 – Toasting bread for a cured meat, ham, and lacy Swiss Cheese sandwich with mixed greens, then watch Bizarre Foods Americas in Lima. Stayed home from work today to get rid of the rest of this cold. Spent most of the day sleeping 11+ hours, more resting reading, along with some on my computer cleaning up my e-mail.

Mar 17 – ENTERED 2015/03/18 – Reading an article about Anthony Bourdain in Wine Spectator magazine about his life, books, TV shows, and how he knows more about wine than he leads to believe you. Talked to Jim a day early for his 50th birthday and then to dad about what’s going on and his traveling to Jim and Lisa’s for the weekend birthday bash. The work was a day of entering accessibility issues into GitLab.

Mar 18 – Listening to “Stacking the Bricks” with Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman, while reading their answers to people’s questions about their product “30 X 500”. Also updated my iPad to iOS 8.2. The day was spent finishing and adding accessibility issues to GitLab, along with closing out 12 issues and passing three back and creating a new one.

Mar 19 – Continuing to listen to “Stacking the Bricks” with Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman, while reading their answers to people questions about their product “30 X 500”. My day at work was spent closing accessibility issues on GitLab, along with helping Neil place device name/programming languages off-screen to help screen reader users.

Mar 20 – Again listening to “Stacking the Bricks” with Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman, while reading their answers to people questions about their product “30 X 500”. Next it’s off to District Taco from some breakfast tacos for dinner, then a little TV and back to more “Stacking the Bricks” podcast and reading 30 x 500 questions and answers.

Mar 21 – Watching the AT&T halftime show with Charles Barkley of the NC State and Villanova while waiting for Notre Dame NCAA college basketball game and eating Banh Mi. Went with Sam to Wegmans, Super H Mart, DC Banh Mi Sandwich.

Mar 22 – Listening to Boag World season 11, which are masterclasses from web experts, along with reading the FQAs for the 30 x 500 Pioneers lessons. The first episode is with Rachel Andrew to talk about starting her products. Wandered around DC and went to the Dupont Farmers Market, then for a drive to listen to “Dinner Party Download” on NPR. Next stop was Georgetown Flea Market, which I purchased a painting. Then stopped at Baked and Wired for cake tops (cake top trimmings with frosting between the layers) and a Doom cupcake (dark chocolate frosting and chocolate cake).  Took a two and a half hour nap, Then went for a two and a half mile walk to get me to 10,700 steps and twelve flights of stairs. Doing so got me to 4.91 miles for the day.

Mar 23 – It’s a Monday so yes, I’m watching “2 Broke Girls”. Spent most of the day updating developer dataset TABLE pages with properly coded TABLEs, along with looking at  the  and running Compliance Sheriff scans. Need a bit more relaxing and TV watching, then it’s back to a bit more 30 x 500 reading.

Mar 24 – Out wandering the neighborhood to get me to 12,000 steps for the day. I added about 3,000 in a slow, leisurely stroll. Spent most of day correcting TABLEs to make them more accessible in the newly updated developer portal.

Mar 25 – ENTERED 2015/03/26 – Was toasting Wegmans Tuscon Garlic bread to make a cured meats sandwich with mixed greens added to get a few veggies in, along with a few pickles. Watched “American Pickers” while eating. Then went to watch a few of the shorter Bacon Biz videos – “Making Loads of Cash with Newsletters”, “4 Stories About Product Launches”, etc. Spent the day finishing up the rest of developer accessibility TABLE issues.

Mar 26 – ENTERED 2015/03/27 – Was on a North American accessibility camp call with people in Canada as well as the United States. We were discussing how to make the camps better, easier to start a new event, how to help sponsors, etc. We had people Toronto, New York City, Boston (while in Pittsburgh for a conference), Louisville, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Austin, San Fransisco, Boulder/Denver, and me from DC. Not sure our focus yet, but we will need to work on that before our next calls. Think we need to gather everyone’s information in one place and then point to their individual websites and events pages. Next we should improve the information on how to start/run a monthly accessibility meeting, which may turn into a year camp. Once people are our ready for a yearly camp, we need to have a road map for people to follow and be willing to help run/schedule, etc. an event. More information to come in the future.

Mar 27 – Waiting to be seated at Momo (sushi) and talking food with the Robertsons. Ordered about 40 pieces of sushi, which is probably the way to much. Finished up developer TABLE accessibility updates and a few other things. Ended up having a relaxing afternoon.

Mar 28 – Eating leftover sushi from last night, which is from Momo Sushi. The sushi wasn’t too bad, even though, the rice was a bit dried out. Looking for different ways to do a hamburger menu that is accessible and using ARIA, but is not built with jQuery, since I don’t want to add the extra bandwidth to an already small page size. Doing so would triple or quadruple the page weight and not something I want, since I’m only using JavaScript for this effect. Managed to get Curry Ramen from Toki Underground after an hour wait and a nap.

Mar 29 – Out on a 25 to 30 minute wander of the neighborhood to get more steps on my FitBit, along with more exercise in general. Started day at Eastern Market with a brick, which is a fried egg, cheese, potatoes, pork sausage, on a soft toasted roll. Then I was off to Union Market to grab Boa (steamed pork buns) and to see if Honey Comb had ingredients for Pho and some vinegars, which I didn’t find. Next drive around town to enjoy the scenery. Once home, I did a bunch of reading of Twitter, Luke W’s research PDF of what they learned with creating Polar, which was easy to use polling application. Luke sold Polar to Google last year (2014). Also did some more reading of Ferran Adria’s “A Day at elBulli”.

Mar 30 – Watching another episode of “2 Broke Girls”. Once the show is over I’m heading out for a 15 – 20 minute walk to add more steps for the day. Was trying to add another 2,000 plus steps. Spent the day looking at APIv2 and developer accessibility issues.

Mar 31 – Running the events that happened at 8:15 PM every night through Grammarly to correct spelling and other simple grammar issues.

Conclusion

In the future, I plan to post this information once a month at the beginning of the following month once I’m caught up.

Hopefully, this has been helpful to you and gets you to keep track of what you do a particular time of the day, along with a short daily diary.

If you want to meet up to do something exciting at 8:15 PM some evening, please leave a comment. Or a suggestion of something that is not part of my ordinary life you think I should do.

Posted in 2015, 8:15 PM, March, What I've Been Doing | 10 Comments

What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) – February 2015

Posted on May 8, 2015 by John F Croston III

Here is the next installment of what I have been doing at 8:15 PM for the month of February. Here’s my post from January, 2015, of what I’ve been doing at 8:15 PM.

Little Background

Started keeping track of what I was doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) every day for the last month after reading Kitt Hodson’s Pastry Box article from Jan 1, 2015. Which was about how a year earlier she read Erica Douglass’s article about writing down what she did at 11:11 AM and 20:14 (8:14 PM) everyday.

I thought this was a great idea to see if I could find any patterns in my nights. So far I tend to watch TV Monday, Thursday, and Sunday nights when I’m home. Also on the weekends I tend to be leaving or coming back from dinner, sometimes even eating dinner.

February

Feb 1 – Watching Katy Perry perform at the halftime of Super Bowl XLXI, along with catching up on Twitter. Nothing exciting going on as of yet with the game tied at 14 to 14. With Seattle scoring with six seconds before the half against New England.

Feb 2 – ENTERED 2015/02/3 – Watched 2 Broke Girls after making updates to my Performance slides. Then last night cleaned up a few 100 e-mails with more work to do.

Feb 3 – Sitting in Barnes and Noble drinking a large Starbucks hot chocolate with whipped cream while looking through magazines. The magazines were Communication Arts magazine, along with: Entrepreneur, Inc, Jamie (Oliver’s), and Fast Company magazines.

Feb 4 – Installing Dragon Naturally Speaking on my Windows 8.1 PC, while cleaning up my e-mail. Busy day working on more APIv2 issues, along with creating a draft of e-mail sent to users.

Feb 5 – Talking with Corey, Emily, and Marisa about the design after the Dribbble DC event were a guy from Gannett talked about using the Oculus Riff. Spent the day reviewing ODEP PDF and UX for APIv2.

Feb 6 – ENTERED 2015/02/16 – Had Pho at Pho Viet Flare so was either there or heading home from there to watch Tree Masters. For some reason, this entry got skipped or deleted from Simple Note while using it on my phone.

Feb 7 – Attempted to install Turbo Tax on my MacBook and found out I need to have OS 10.7 or higher to install, and I only have OS 10.6. Glad I have my PC, which has Windows 7. Also working on my 2015 THEME blog post about a HEALTHIER ME. Visited my local coffee shop (St. Elmo’s). Did some reading, napping, and next TV, and dinner.

Feb 8 – Watching Anthony Bourdain’s the Layover in Toronto. After a day of seeing the movie “The Theory of Everything”, Pho at Pho 75 in Arlington, VA, taking a nap, and a getting 3.41 mile walk into Old Town down King St.

Feb 9 – Listening to Ali, Max, and two others talk about getting into UX, what they do, what they are looking for in a new hire at General Assembly DC. Most of the day was spent looking at PDF issues and closing out issues in GitLab.

Feb 10 – At Clarendon Apple Store looking at 13″ Retina MacBook Pro to replace my old White MacBook. Played around with the Notes and Pages, along with Mac Word 2011 to see if the files created were accessible. A long day of checking eight or 10 PDFs and other documents at work.

Feb 11 – Laying in my bed looking at the days Twitter after reviewing PDFs and attending two meetings. Then spending the afternoon teaching Compliance Sheriff class, along with my “Is Your Website Accessible?” talk and other accessibility issues at a work agency.

Feb 12 – Writing up notes for the four websites Viget Labs asked to check for the talk on Friday. Next need to check the home page with JAWS to see how things read and what is going on with the extra accessibility navigation thing. Another busy day checking documents.

Feb 13 – Finishing up Pho at Pho Viet Flare on Van Dorn or heading home from there. Stopped at Sugar Shack for donuts. Had a good day at Viget Labs talking accessibility with their team in DC, Raliegh, NC, and Boulder, CO.

Feb 14 – Eating roast pork Bahn Mi sandwiches while watching “Dinners, Drive-ins, and Dives while waiting to watch mid-season finale of MythBusters. Got cars oil changed, then over to St. Elmo’s, home to read then out to Pho 75 with Sam and Eric. We then went to Super H Mart for meat to add to tomorrow’s soup with a stop at Banh Mi DC Sandwich.

Feb 15 – Sitting in Buzz Bakery with two 9:30 cupcakes to go after a busy day. Went to Hoffman 22 to see the five Oscar-nominated shorts films, along with the ten or so nominated animated shorts films and runners up. Then it was off to St. Elmo’s to read with a cup of hot chocolate. Then to Dairy Godmother for a quart of salted caramel custard and then drive to Mt. Vernon before dinner at Momo (sushi).

Feb 16 – Watching 2 Broke Girls on a relaxing Presidents Day holiday. Spent day reading, napping, and trying to come up with a better way to have multiple skip navigation links on Craig’s Hospital. Having an issue with the width of the container, which I’m thinking is getting style in JavaScript. Plus, waiting to see how much snow we get tonight and wondering if work will be canceled or have two hour delay.

Feb 17 – Back to reading “A Day at elBulli” by Ferran Adria. Currently, read page six of the “Creative Methods I” lime green section of the book which is between pages 136 and 137. The Federal government was closed today because of snow (three to four inches at my house). I ended up shoveling a few driveways (mine and end of neighbors after plow came through) for an hour and a half to two hours. Then it was time to watch “Gift of Business chat with Amy Hoy, Alex Hillman, and Brenan Dunn after that was a late lunch of Pho at Pho Viet Flare. I  dropped my car at Landmark Honda to get an oil pan gasket fix before hopping a bus to King St. metro station and walked home from there.

Feb 18 – Watching an old episode of “American Pickers”. Reviewed a half a dozen PDF’s on first day back after a four day weekend because yesterday was a federal government snow day.

Feb 19 – ENTERED 2015/02/20 – Listening to Kaytee Nesmith talk about the UX of crypto applications. These applications can make life safer for those in danger or sources for articles at nclud as part of February’s Refresh DC event.

Feb 21 – Driving Sam and Eric home after dinner Ray’s the Steaks with William, Anthony D Paul, Samantha, and a few others. Had the hanger steak with mashed potatoes, wild mushrooms, and bone marrow, along with steak tar tar, horseradish, and capers in deviled eggs.

Feb 20 – Leaving Caphe Banh Mi where I had a small house Pho (eye round and brisket with beef broth) with extra noodles. While sharing part of my table with six women out celebrating two of their 50th birthdays. That was fun getting asked a bunch of questions while eating from slightly drunk women. Say of APIv2 meetings about UX and accessibility issues.

Feb 22 – Eating a roasted pork Bahn Mi while watching to Oscar pre-show on ABC. Slept in and did a bit of snow removal so when it freezes tonight it would be an ice rink. Then went to Pho 75 for a small bowl of #10 (eye round and fatty brisket). Next grabbed Bahn Mi, chocolate chocolate cupcakes (Doom) from Baked and Wired, along with breakfast tacos for a mid-afternoon snack.

Feb 23 – Its Monday night so watching 2 Broke Girls like most weeks. Talked with my brother James earlier who called for my birthday a day early. Spent the day dealing with APIv2 with Daniel and figuring out more issues with Token and Datasets.

Feb 24 – Again finding time to read “A Day at elBulli” by Ferran Adria on my 52nd birthday. I’m in the middle of the history of the elBulli section, which are the tan pages between pages 184 and 185. Finished the history up until 1997. After I’m done with the history section, it’s off to grab Pho at Caphe Banh Mi in old town Alexandria and bring it home.

Feb 25 – ENTERED 2015/02/26 – Was catching up on “American Pickers”. Needed to unwind after a day of reviewing PDF’s.

Feb 26 – Watching “Big Bang Theory” after running to Burke and Herbert Bank to pay my rent, then to eye doctors to pick up my new glasses. Next off to Barnes and Noble to pick up “Great Discontent” and “Lucky Peach magazines. Finally, stopping at South China to grab Mongolian Lo Mein after a long day checking PDF’s after a two-hour snow delay.

Feb 27 – Flying to SFO for Bay Area Accessibility Camp at LinkedIn in Mountian View, CA. Currently, over middle America somewhere between the western side of Iowa and eastern side of Nebraska. I’m sitting next to Nguyet and Doug how are headed to Sonoma Valley for a few days.

Feb 28 – Sitting in Agave Mexican Bistro with a dozen or so accessibility people after a great day at Bay Area Accessibility Camp at LinkedIn in Mountview, CA.

Conclusion

After re-reading these entries, I have notice how much I have done over these few months. Some of it productive and other times recharging the batteries. I also at some point in my writing down of events started adding in how the day went, what happened, what I planned to do later, and I was thinking.

In the future, I plan to post this information once a month at the beginning of the following month.

Hopefully, this has been helpful to you and gets you to keep track of what you do a particular time of the day, along with a short daily diary.

If you want to meet up to do something exciting at 8:15 PM some evening, please leave a comment. Or a suggestion of something that is not part of my ordinary life you think I should do.

 

Posted in 2015, 8:15 PM, February, What I've Been Doing | 11 Comments

What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) the Last Few Months

Posted on May 5, 2015 by John F Croston III

Started keeping track of what I was doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) every day for the last few months after reading Kitt Hodson’s Pastry Box article from Jan 1, 2015. Which was about how a year earlier she read Erica Douglass’s article about writing down what she did at 11:11 AM and 20:14 (8:14 PM) everyday.

I thought this was a great idea to see if I could find any patterns in my nights. So far I tend to watch TV Monday, Thursday, and Sunday nights when I’m home. Also on the weekends I tend to be leaving or coming back from dinner, sometimes even eating dinner.

Below I was going list all the things I have been  up to for the past month at 8:15 PM, but realized it was going to be over 6,500 words so will be posting February, March, and April entries over the next week or so. Some days I didn’t enter the information into my phone (SimpleNote application) until later that day or the next day because I was spending time with others and didn’t think it polite to stop right then to write what was happening. On those occasions I made mental note and did it later. Sometimes you will see “ENTERED – YYYY/MM/DD” after a date that notes when I entered the information.

January

Jan 1 – N/A – Hadn’t started yet.

Jan 2 – Writing bills, rent check, and fixing checkbox alignment CSS.

Jan 3 – Watching Edward Lee in the third season of “Mind of a Chef” (video) on DVD. While he is talking to Andy Ricker of Pok Pok, and I’m eating cured meat and cheese sandwich on a great baguette.

Jan 4 – Again watching the second season of “Mind of a Chef” on DVD with Sean Brock (video). While he is talking with Edward Lee about making Korean BBQ and using Carolina Gold rice, and I’m eating cured meat sandwich on a great baguette.

Jan 5 – Watching “2 Broke Girls” and then it’s time for dinner before doing work on the INPUT field outline examples pages. This TV watching thing needs to change sooner than later.

Jan 6 – Updating WordPress: plugins, themes, etc. and looking through spam comments to see if and are good, along with looking at my draft folder to see if anything is ready to post.

Jan 7 – Working on making two different text versions of an organization chart one using a definition list (DL) and the other using heading structure to convey who and what groups fall under what. Going to convert work example to be Geeks Love Wine related example.

Jan 8 – Watching “The Big Bang Theory” and starting to outline the FOCUS on INPUT blog post, along with one about a possible better way to display an organizational chart with text.

Jan 9 – Watching American Pickers and Dinners, Drive-ins, and Dives while waiting to go to District Taco for fish tacos closer to 9 PM.

Jan 10 – Watching the beginning of the Carolina Panthers and Seattle Seahawks NFC Divisional football  game.

Jan 11 – Taking a break from working on responsive TABLE example, while also doing laundry.

Jan 12 – Working on making fixes to the responsive TABLE example, so the footer doesn’t end up showing a horizontal scroll bar while listening to the Stick Mob’s “Drive West All Night”.

Jan 13 – ENTERED 2015/01/14 – Was attending WordPress DC and listening to Anthony D Paul on “How to Create a Website Using WordPress on Your Cellphone”.

Jan 14 – Purchased CSUN tickets and now checking the weather for a trip to Cleveland for a long weekend and then booking the hotel for now at least.

Jan 15 – Looking at plane tickets from DCA to SFO and then SAN to DCA, while updating my responsive TABLE example to use other data than work dataset data that I first made it with.

Jan 16 – ENTERED 2015/01/16 – Driving to Cleveland, OH, to go see the Ferran Adria “Creativity” exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland in Cleveland Heights, OH.

Jan 17 – Watching Barrett-Jackson car auction while waiting for the Mythbuster’s “Indiana Jones Special” in Cleveland, OH. Drove from DC to Somerset, PA, with a side trip to see Kathy and Nicolas Chugh at his swim meet in Canton, OH, next to Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Jan 18 – Ordered a few of Ferran Adria book ( add book names ) after attending Ferran Adria’s “Notes on Creativity” at Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland. After spending three hours at Cleveland Museum of Art. Had dinner at Eric Meyer’s house.

Jan 19 – Relaxing by watching 2 Broke Girls after driving home from Cleveland that took over eight hours instead of the six I expected it too.

Jan 20 – Watched TV while getting rid of slight headache and queasy feeling after having to wear broken glasses all day. Glasses frame broke yesterday and got an older pair as a backup pair so current lenses would fit into them until I can get newer ones, along with the new prescription.

Jan 21 – Starting to read “A Day at elBulli” to see what Ferran Adria’s creative thought process, along with he and his staff go through in a day to serve dinner to about 50 people.

Jan 22 – ENTERED 2015/01/23 – Was driving to Taco Bamba to have tripe, tongue, and el pastor tacos before meeting the Deque group at their hotel in Dulles.

Jan 23 – ENTERED 2015/01/24 – Was having dinner with Glenda “the Good Witch” Sims (Twitter), along with fellow Deque employees Dian and Jeneen and then Sam at Hyatt Dulles. We headed up to Glenda’s room for wine and more conversation once dinner was done.

Jan 25 – Watching the Screen Actors Guild Awards after a day at the movies watching “The Imitation Game” and “Birdman”.

Jan 24 – Again reading “A Day at elBulli” by Ferran Adria about their process of creating dishes and how learning a technique for one thing can help when creating something else later on. This afternoon went to Sugar Shack on their grand opening day to try their donuts which are great from the one I have eaten so far, plus had Pho at Pho 75 with extra noodles for dinner.

Jan 26 – Watching “Trip 2015” on Travel Channel, which I’m guessing is a big ad for each of the companies being shown. Then during ads need to update nephews soccer website with requested changes. Loads of fun at work with meetings and PDF reviews.

Jan 27 – Started the first draft/outline of my “Healthier ME” blog post (never finished), which I’m currently explaining last year’s theme. Next need to explain why I’m looking to improve my health. I’m listening to “The Stick Mobs” who are from the DC area. It’s getting difficult since I had no breakfast and a small lunch. Need dinner soon. I’m thinking South China takeout.

Jan 28 – ENTERED 2015/01/29 – Looking at the AT&T accessibility jobs and decided not to apply, since not sure what I want to do for work. Am I going to do more coding or UX?

Jan 29 – Talking with the Army .MILers old and new at Refresh DC (Twitter) after listening to Megan Zlock talk about the differences between the CMS Craft and WordPress.

Jan 30 – Sitting in Pho 75 with Sam and Eric ordering a small round eye and fatty brisket with extra noodles. A day spent using JAWS on two PowerPoints and entered 20+ issues into GitLab.

Jan 31 – Laying on my bed listening to Hot Jazz Saturday on NPR while reading twitter after a long day of shopping with Sam. We went to Sam’s, Wegmans, Super H Mart, and Banh Mi DC Sandwich.

Conclusion

After re-reading these entries, I have notice how much I have done over these few months. Some of it productive and other times recharging the batteries. I also at some point in my writing down of events started adding in how the day went, what happened, what I planned to do later, and I was thinking.

In the future, I plan to post this information once a month at the beginning of the following month.

Hopefully, this has been helpful to you and gets you to keep track of what you do a particular time of the day, along with a short daily diary.

If you want to meet up to do something exciting at 8:15 PM some evening, please leave a comment. Or a suggestion of something that is not part of my ordinary life you think I should do.

 

Posted in 2015, 8:15 PM, January, What I've Been Doing | 12 Comments

Canceling Accessibility Camp DC for October 11, 2014

Posted on September 23, 2014 by John F Croston III

After much thought and discussion, we are canceling Accessibility Camp DC on October 11, 2014.

We hope this does not cause too many people grief because they have already booked airfare and hotels to attend the event. I notified those I knew who were attending from out of town that we might have to cancel the event.

For those still coming to DC because you purchased airfare and hotel, we can still get together and talk abut accessibility. We could even have a wine and cheese tasting at my house, along with sightseeing if you want too.

A big thanks to our sponsors. I will look into the fastest way to get you your money back. It might take a bit with EventBrite, but I will figure something out.

Thanks for all those that did register and planned on attending camp.

We are looking into the possibility of re-scheduling the event for a later date. Most likely, the event will be in January or February of 2015.

Posted in Accessibility, AccessibiltyCamp, AccessibiltyCampDC, BarCamp, Martin Luther King Jr. Library, Washington, DC | 2 Comments